MOVIE REVIEW: 'Mood Indigo' a feast for the eyes

Michel Gondry's acid trip of a movie is such a visual stunner you might well forget how humdrum a story it encompasses.

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By Al AlexanderFor The Patriot Ledger

The Herald News, Fall River, MA

By Al AlexanderFor The Patriot Ledger

Posted Aug. 8, 2014 at 6:30 AM

By Al AlexanderFor The Patriot Ledger
Posted Aug. 8, 2014 at 6:30 AM

MOOD INDIGO

(Unrated.) Cast includes Audrey Tautou, Romain Duris and Omar Sy. Co-written and directed by Michel Gondry. In French with English subtitles. At Kendall Square, Cambridge. Grade: B-

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MOOD INDIGO

(Unrated.) Cast includes Audrey Tautou, Romain Duris and Omar Sy. Co-written and directed by Michel Gondry. In French with English subtitles. At Kendall Square, Cambridge. Grade: B-

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I don’t think it’s what Hemingway had in mind when he called Paris a moveable feast, but the dancing food in “Mood Indigo” is something you’ll never forget. Same for the rest of Michel Gondry’s acid trip of a movie in which joy and tragedy are vividly expressed through color, form and imagination. It’s such a visual stunner you might well forget how humdrum a story it encompasses.

Culled from Boris Vian’s fantastical novel, the movie is a through-the-looking-glass parable about life, love and the transformative power Duke Ellington holds over two free-spirited Parisians on course for a nasty dustup with fate. The couple, played by the appealingly quirky Audrey Tautou (in full “Amelie form”) and the handsomely disheveled Romain Duris (“The Beat My Heart Skipped”), meet cute, fall in love, get married and soon find their wedded bliss cruelly interrupted.

It’s touching to the point it becomes maudlin and twee. Then, it goes completely off the rails, as Gondry and his co-writer, Luc Bossi, shamelessly surrender to cliches and predictability in a third act that grows as tedious as the first act is mind-bending. It would be easy to accuse Gondry of running out of ideas, but I think it has more to do with money. In the first 15 minutes alone he nearly exhausts the budget on candy-colored special effects so elaborate and inventive they inspire childlike wonder. Bodies contort, tiny men dressed as mice disperse bubbles, and bits of Vian’s text are pecked out on an assembly line of typewriters riding on tracks as Ellington’s “Take the A Train” plays. That’s just the beginning. Later, Tautou’s Chloe and Duris’ Colin are lifted high into the air on a cloud attached to a construction crane. And, my favorite, the dancing food, prepared by Colin’s lawyer, friend and chef, Nicolas (Omar Sy).

But once the film passes its midway point and becomes a slave to plot, much of the fizz goes out of it, as does the color and invention. It’s neat how Gondry does a reverse “Wizard of Oz” by beginning in Technicolor and ending in stark black and white, but it feels too much like a heavy-handed metaphor. Ditto for a water lily growing in a character’s lung like a cancer, and the ensuing treatments that shrink the couple’s wallet along with the floral growth.

It’s meant to be deep, but comes off as silly and trite. And what purpose do the grandiose visuals serve if there’s nothing of substance behind them? My only guess is that its to entertain stoners and art fans like Gondry, who’s always been more of a painter than a filmmaker. That doesn’t mean his films, like “The Science of Sleep” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” aren’t lovely to behold, because they are. But if he could match those awesome visuals with an equally compelling story, like Scorsese did with “Hugo” or Alfonso Cuaron did last year with “Gravity,” he’d really be onto something. But for some reason, Gondry, unlike his contemporary, Spike Jonze, can’t escape his music-video origins. Perhaps that’s why “Mood Indigo” feels more like an elongated Bjork video than a feature film.

Page 2 of 2 - At least the acting is superb, from Tautou and Duris down to the supporting turns by Gondry himself, playing a quack doctor, and Gad Elmaleh as the close pal who introduces Colin to Chloe. The biggest kudos, though, go to set director Stephane Rozenbaum, costumer Florence Fontaine, cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne and, last but not least, Duke Ellington, whose marvelous music fills the soundtrack, and whose spirit is deeply entwined in both the book (Vian, a big fan, even named his novel after an Ellington tune) and the movie. His music not only gives the film its jazz, but also its soul.